Rob Farley

you should use this one - my details are here already as i'm registered and it remembers it all for me :)

btw, congratulations Rob..well deserved!!!

Sorry I missed it now, Rob, but Andrew (crucible) has blogged in so much detail that I feel like I was there! He raved about your session, by the way.

Are you going to make your slides available online? Did you even use slides? :)

Thanks, Rob. This is great advice. I particularly like tips 7, 8 and 9. Much appreciated.

Hi Rob

I had a go at writing a procedural T-SQL version over at my blog. I wonder if it's any faster...

Hi Rob

Thanks for the kind words! I've used similar techniques in various guises for quite a few years (I've done a fair bit in the way of bit manipulation algorithms and assembler), but it is not a new technique. I can't remember where I first saw something similiar. I suppose it is really just a one-to-one mapping.

Obviously you dont own one of the 'fantastic' new rw6828 mobile messengers from HP, or you'd be intimately familiar with the ritual of daily soft reset and frequent hard reset - and the host of problems that culminate in this frustrating need to bounce the device ...

Finally its happened. The government has put in place a three year trial thats likely to begin the 1st

I think the issue around daylight savings was initially aimed at farmers and schoolchildren.  It was based on safety to try to have the daylight in the morning when they were going to school and, because they finish in the afternoon before we all finish work, the early nights were not an issue.  The safety issue always seems to crop up whenever daylight savings is discussed.  I have also seen mention of moving the clocks permanently to the summer-time setting all year round - which also seems to get shot down because of safety concerns.

The whole time thing is screwed. Why do we even need time zones in the first place?

Consider this: It's 1AM in London. At that same moment, it's 1AM in Sydney. It's also 1AM in New York.

What would be the problems with that?

In Sydney, our working day might start at 5PM and finish at 1 AM (when it's light and day). In London you'd start work at 3AM and go home at 11PM. What's the problem? You'd hear a bunch of people coming back from London telling funny anecdotes that they used to wake up at 3AM to go to work, but that would pass after a couple of years.

What would be the benefits?

Computer systems would always work no matter what the timezone is. You'd never need to worry about "daylight savings" - that would just involve people leaving for work at 6PM instead of 5PM. It would be as if everyone ran off UTC time.

The current time system is like Imperial measurements. It's time we came up with a Metric time system!

Ah, damn. Another state falls to the ridiculousness of DST. I'm not a big fan of it either, Rob:

http://www.madprops.org/cs/blogs/mabster/archive/2003/10/26/Clock-Idiocy.aspx

Paul,

Love the idea of a metric time system! I've been waiting a gigasecond for someone to come up with that!

heh - I was a member of an open source project (www.harbour-project.org) once that tried using Swatch Time as its time measurement. They soon switched back to UTC. :)

I hate it when DS sneaks up on you.

This weekend we are planning a significant upgrade of a complex legacy cluster system, with very restrictive outage windows. It's a 20 hour process with ugly backouts if things go wrong. They had all the timings down pat. Then somebody mentioned "hey, remember we lose an hour ..." ... bah ...

:-)

Yay Queensland...for now anyway

Congrats!

As a current member leaving the BEC, I'll be interested in seeing what you have planned.

The link you quote demonstrates 2006 as being the correct response, and describes that dates before 1900 or after 1999 should produce a four-digit year.

As you say, though getFullYear is the correct function.

This arose because the designers of Javascript did not exactly specify the results that getYear should provide past 1999, leading to some browsers returning "06", others returning "2006", and some returning "106" - you can see occasional web sites even now telling you that the year is "19106" as a result.

To a large degree, it's the perception of experience. The IT industry has so many things wrong with

Very well written Rob.

Hobbes: imaginary friend? You'll be telling me Santa doesn't exist next!

Congratulations Rob, I don't know where you find the time. Do have a secret stash hidden away somewhere, or maybe a clone (now that is a scary thought) :)

Very interesting post. Our industry is very polarized as you state. I see the older guys who have been around and are no longer relevant then I see the younger guys who jumped into the field because that is where the money is but have no real aptitude for this.

In competency knows no age barriers and neither do knowledge or enthusiasm.

I just turned 50 and I'm probably one of the leading players in my field. But that is because I still have the enthusiasm for what I do. At my age I think I can keep this up for years but I often wonder of companies and others will allow me to just because of my age.

Following a number of posts by fellow MVPs Rob Farley (here, here and here) and Mitch Denny (a number...

Aw get over it guys.

I for one am glad that the sun now comes up an hour later. I was getting a little fed up with the birds waking me up at 4:30am when the light first hit their nests.

I only hope that Steve Bracks' push to start DS at the beginning of October catches on.

Welcome to the ACS... you're now on the inside with a chance to make a difference. If you survive the board meetings that is.

A good blogging voice is rare in ACS!

Up until now it has been largely made up of those who 'discovered the land' together, not so much immigrants as first settlers. Many are survivors of the great 'drought' of the dot com bust, and have great mentoring value.

But your restless energy of wanting to build a new world built on skills rather than academia alone is overdue!

If 'professionalism' means 'doing it better' then please continue to promote a more professional, diverse, interesting digital world.

You are heard.

"you're going to be in Adelaide, you should come along..."  ... and get a free dose of glandular fever !!  Just kidding Rob ! ;)

Hope you perk up soon.

I do have something - although I'm nearly better now. But my blood test showed that my white cell count

ie is never the tool of choice, its just the tool of necessity when a site is browser dependent...

you scare me rob - definetly no webcam please ;-)

my only concern is that you live in the dryest state in the dryest continent on the planet - would having a tablet-pc in the shower contribute to saving water ? (hint - dont load civilisation on it ...)

My theory is that it is your sub-conscious taunting you. :)

It's been working on these ideas all night and only shows them to you when it knows you can't do anything about them. If you put a tablet PC in the shower the ideas wouldn't come.

only problem with being able to do all that kinda stuff in the shower is that you'd stay in the shower for longer, and the rest of us would have harsher water restrictions!

take the tablet pc out and connect it to your network to print stuff :P  As soon as you put it online, its all over ;)

Hey this is all bogus.  You shower, aren't you English.

yes, it's also now on Connect for Beta testers - downloading 6.1Gb (32bit + 64bit)

-dave

I live in Perth and i hate daylight saving. I am not going to set the time to daylight saving even if it's passed because i can live on my own time quite happily, thanks.

I mean, nature sets time, so even if parliament changes it, they don't really, because time just keeps going on without interruption.

:)

all the above is fine, but I still have this problem when someone comes up with an idea and I try to visualise it - because its Rob's idea, its *him* that appears in my imagination, standing in the shower, soap on a rope around his neck, suds everywhere, sporting a rather large windows tablet edition waterproof showerputer ... im sure Rob will look rather fetching in the magazine adverts if the product ever comes to fruition ...

jcomment telecharger sur msdn le lien pour la rtm

give a man 7 watches and he'll give you seven versions of the time. Check out secunia, factor in bug severity and the fact the article is talking "reported bugs". Theres a lot more to it than a single 'report' ... time to exploit, time to patch, occurrent frequency, severity, vendor openness and responsiveness ... anyone can look good or bad depending on the moment in time the report snapshot chooses to use ...

The implications for e-systems are a giggle. Anyone know what day it ends so I can patch my time zone?

Oracle *might* have 3400% more vulnerabilities than MS SQL, but it has 5000% more features than MS SQL. Seriously after working on both databases I know which one I prefer..Transact SQL is by far the most painful language to use (errmmm maybe javascript comes close)....

Well, my brother hasn't quite joined an AFL side yet, but maybe he'll get in through the Rookie Draft

Aren't you a soccer fan?

Must have been a confused house to grow up in...you know roundball and all that!

BTW I'd love your feedback on www.whooiz.com

We released a blog widget today ;)

no nooizFeed at this stage but it is coming :)

and thanks for adding ya profile

so is microsoft actually releasing a patch to give perth/WA a daylight savings upgrade?

obviously we can just change our computer clocks, but any reference to other countries will be incorrect.

i for one welcome the trial .... because that is what it is. maybe after 3 years it is a load of crap and people dont want to adjust - so nothing happens - or after 3 years everyone loves finishing work and going to the beach .... who knows!

I have joined fellow MVP Rob Farley in learning how to integrate wHooiz correctly (well at least...

The great thing about paper forms is that you can fill them out right there at the event.

I bet this year's TechEd had the lowest response rate of filling out eval forms because you had to find a computer and do it online.

A nice idea as it saves someone doing the data entry, but by the time most people get around to finding a computer, they've probably forgotten half of the presentation anyway.

If everyone had tablet pc's then maybe you could do evals online and get a good response rate, but I think paper has a lot going for it still.

The other trick is to pick sessions that no one goes to to increase your chance of winning the $100 gift voucher. The downside of that is you probably go to a session that even you aren't interested in!

-dave

PingBack from http://www.mscerts.com/microsoft-certs/17

The slight issue I have with the SMS voting is the cost of the SMS is borne by the voter.

Fine for the odd vote but I wonder how people would feel if it became the norm?

Lol, yes the form collection process for the roadshow did feel a little hardcore but getting feedback continues to be a problem...

Cheers, Dave

Beh, DST doesn't really effect me, but the only thing I really hate about it is changing the clocks :P.

But Cutty makes a really good point there, a trial is a trial, thats what it's for TO TRIAL something.

Anyway.

Don't get me started!  Must admit, there was havoc synchronising the i-mate and outlook, but everything else about DS is fan-bloody-tastic: http://theperthfiles.blogspot.com/

Yes,,an intersting year is ahead of us. I am also joining the BEC new, and am really looking forward to it. I too think ACS should develop a strong Virtual Community, because for ever evolving IT industry, it is essential.

(My blog is at http://yasasva.blogspot.com/. I am new to blogging even though I have been admiring the concept for a long time, looking forward to be an active blogger)

news of the day a grab bag for what's happening in Community Server Eric A. Duncan is good on his word

Rob Farley shows how to make the most of the News section web control on a hosted Community Server blog.

The same applies for promotion and not just with handover. If you share information with colleagues freely (as I know you do) then not only is handover a much simpler and smaller task, but your value as a knowledgable and capable employee is obvious at all times. Coupled with the documentation of howtos or knowledgebases identifying small but useful aspects of daily work this makes you an easy target for promotion. Conversely, the guy who hides all 'the secrets' is seen as such and because nobody understands what he does and nobody else can do his job, he's kept exactly where he is. Often these people are actually incompetent, one of the 'qualities' they are trying to hide.

I agree with what you say in general, but I feel that really does not solve the problem fully. Even though you document what you do, the chances are high that you miss the tiny little points that you consider are not important, obvious or already known by the new guy. These are the exact points that you would miss during a verbal handover or a typical semi-documented handover.

So, in my opinion, it has to be a combination of all those that would be used. All or most (depending the situation) of the hand-over methods such as documentation, peer working, verbal, emails, casual chats, sharing all the info available, introducing to all possible contact points etc. have to be done.

I personally had the same experience that you have had. When I left the previous employer, they allocated a new person quickly, but the new person left after few months! Due to the panic, they could not find the best match for the role, but sent the available one directly to the deep-end, obviously the pressure and the ask would have been too much. So, this proves that apart from all the above mentioned methods, it is important to find the best match for the role even though there can be practical situations which are truly difficult.

Pls send me brain dump of 70-431 at kamal.vohra@ril.com

Thanks.

"At this point I stopped trying... I had other things to do like gardening."

Would you have persevered if the Poms were winning ?

This website looks absolutly unuseless :)

And me...

Rob,

Do they sell Velveeta in Australia?  I've found that a lot of disappointments in life can be ameliorated by consuming melted Velveeta on taco chips, especially if you add a bit of salsa and maybe some jalapeño pepper slices.

Hi Rob,

I think to be a successful blog READER you need to seek multiple opinions on the same subject. Don't just subscribe to one blog, subscribe to three or more, or even better a Technorati feed.

American law says, IIRC (and IANAL), that unsolicited goods through the mail are yours to keep and do with as you please.

I guess some of the nay-sayers will tell you that celebrities are known to be biased in what they hawk - and of course, so are bloggers. The trick is to know what bias your chosen blogs have.

Frankly, when I get free stuff, I say "thank you", I play with it, and if I like it, I write good things about it; if I don't like it, I write bad things about it and give it away or return it. I may even say "this is a great thing, but I wouldn't pay the money they're asking for it".

This is no different from magazines and newspapers, who are given freebies for review purposes - usually they are allowed to keep the review freebies.

I think you can discern bias from reading the blog, regardless of whether the blogger received freebies or not.

Now, of course, if the freebie was unrelated to the review product - "write a review about our product while you're on this free cruise" - you could get reasonably upset.

Me, if I'd received a Ferrari, I'd be giving it to a deserving computer user - my wife, say, or the company she works for. It'd be entirely coincidence that this is the same company I work part-time for. :-)

Wow, talk about a storm in a tea cup!  Sounds like a the only people complaining are those jealous people that didn't get one.

BTW - Australian IT even has a news article about it : http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20986786%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

I've been tagged from down under by Rob from Adelade , so here are 5 things you might not know about

reg has picked this up also ...

http://www.theregister.com/2007/01/02/microsoft_free_ferarri_pc/

not me

James Green ponders How to know if no one is reading your blog... Adelaide based Arsenal fan (not to

James Green ponders How to know if no one is reading your blog... Adelaide based Arsenal fan (not to

James Green ponders How to know if no one is reading your blog... Adelaide based Arsenal fan (not to

Ah, but would you believe me if I said Maybe?

/raises hand

Asking for comments is a good approach, but unfortunately one that doesn't work all that often. Well, either that, or no-one actually does read my blog. :)

You might bang on about Arsenal too much for my liking Rob but I still read your blog ;)

I Do! Except when I'm on holidays like the last few weeks. So many posts to catch up on!

i do, i do, i do...i read WAY too many blogs...

I'm not sure how this comment will be received (i've received a bit of hate-email lately for some of

good post Rob...

And so , we cross swords again =)

Of course, an Aussies interpretation of this would be :

Warne - thinking to himself - HEY, I'm the top scorer, we have a 100+ run lead, so let's try for some quick runs. If I get out, it just lets me attack the insignificant English batting that much sooner.

England is 67/3 at the moment. [16:10 Aussie Central Summer Time] Hope the weather hasn't killed our chances of a rout.

Thanks for the shout Rob and point taken, I will be back on messenger really soon...

Several years ago I had the pleasure of working with Rob Farley who I could describe in many ways: top...

The English team should be commended for staying in Australia for the whole series - true sportsmanship where resistance was clearly futile ;-)

And so it came to pass that...but you know the rest

Nice one Rob :-)  Good solution...

The thing that motivated me to post that was how, when presented with the problem I jumped down the codegen path because there was a lot of code gen in my life at the time - hope I didn't give the impression I thought it was the most technically beautiful solution :-)

Like i said, I was weak - trying to kick the habit ;)

Best regards,

James

but since they know you are in Adelaide, and your middle initial is J from your Yahoo IM id, then it conveniently narrows it down to 1 option listed in the white pages ...

... for that matter theres only one "GOSBELL D" listed in the whitepages for Melbourne. Of course being listed doesnt mean its the same one, but ...

I can see the headline now:

'man held at mousepoint and forced to code multiple sql queries after serial mvp stalker strikes again ...'

This is a great example of Powershell's capaiblities as were your gadget demos. Powershell really takes shell-scripting to the next level through rich object support as you mentioned.

The other nice side to this story is that you can build your own cmdlets in .NET that extend the shell itself. For example you can expose your own LOB App data stores so that they can be administered and accessed via the shell as virtual folders in the same way that you can access the file system, registry.

Also you can easily access your own custom .NET classes and class them from within you shell scripts just as you have done here for example

[System.Reflection.Assembly]:LoadWithPartialName("MyAssembly")

The possiblities are endless!

Powershell is a truly awesome new shell that we've recently shipped with .NET 3.0 and Windows Vista.

Powershell is a truly awesome new shell that we've recently shipped with .NET 3.0 and Windows Vista.

Very cool! Congatulations on 5-0 sweep in the ashes. I will use your script as a basis to get India-SA scores!

-Abhishek

Hi Rob,

Sorry I’m late to the party but I thought you’d appreciate some input from Acer.

No, wait. FULL DISLOSURE: I work with Acer EMEA’s marketing team. I have my own independent blog with no official affiliation with Acer <A HREF=”http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/yada+yada”>yada yada</A>…

Sorry, Scoble-induced safety measures…

OK. The “free notebook” story is on everyone’s lips, so are the names involved, Microsoft, Edelman and Acer, not to mention Microsoft’s growing list of MVPs.

There are hundreds of conspiracy theories floating around (well one big one really) yet I just wanted to throw this spanner into the works.

Acer’s EMEA marketing team knew nothing about this. Sounds crazy I know but it’s true. In fact I’ll go so far as to say we only found out after <A HREF=http://scobleizer.com/2006/12/27/i-think-the-microsoft-vista-giveaway-is-an-awesome-idea/>Scoble</A> published!

Of course <I>someone</I> must have known, as that many Ferraris don’t get out the door that quietly in one go but whoever it was probably thought he’d just made his Christmas bonus.. For us, it was a great way to end the year.

Talk about free publicity…!

I’m not condoning or attacking these marketing tactics, but you’ve got to admit that from my standpoint, Acer couldn’t have asked for more.

blog bits FeedBurner in the news. Community Server information moves in waves and its FeedBurner's turn

blog bits FeedBurner in the news. Community Server information moves in waves and its FeedBurner's turn

I read your blog whenever I get a chance. Your writing style attracts me to read it ;)

FeedBurner in the news. Community Server information moves in waves and its FeedBurner's turn to wash

I know. You're thinking: there are hundreds of JMPs out there so why should this be any different?

What normally happens when MS rolls out a new software (it happened before with Windows XP Tablet Edition in 2002) is that they showcase it on fully-working machines (obviously).

Microsoft orders and pays for "x" number of notebooks from whatever PC vendor it chooses (Acer on both occasions can't be a bad sign LOL) and then demos them or sends them out to "a chosen few".

In this case the same happened with the Acer Ferraris but rather than go to journalists, they went to bloggers. Like I said, brilliant PR for Acer (heard ANY bad comments about the machines so far??). If only we'd known in advance....

Don't look at me... my reach doesn't stretch that far. Besides, last time I heard NOTHING gets out of Acer without a receipt LOL.

Give Edelman a ring before the unwanted ones all end up on eBay ;)

Using RegEx to then use substring is like crossing the river for water (not sure if thats a saying anywhere else than Denmark):

$ret = (new-object Net.WebClient).DownloadString("http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/ausveng/engine/current/match/249226.html?view=live;wrappertype=mainframe")

[Regex]::Match($ret,"<title>(.*)</title>","IgnoreCase").Groups[1].Value

Other than Windows itself, I wonder if the free Acers were preloaded with vulnerabilities ?

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-012007.html#00001073

Have you thought about using a Macbook Pro? I'm not joking either.  Just install BootCamp and you are off and running in XP...and hopefully Vista soon.   I have an iMac running XP and I love it.

Brian

My money would be on either a macbook pro or dell.. I have had a few dells in different jobs and I have to say, they've all far exceeded my expectations - at least WAY moreso than an HP ;)

My next laptop, due in midyear or so, will be a lenovo (ibm), so can't comment on that one yet *grin*

I started seriously trying to learn the new Windows PowerShell scripting language this week. I started...

I'm currently running an Acer which has been excellent value and with a 2gb memory upgrade happily runs VMs for all my SharePoint 2007 development and demonstration purposes.

I decided a while back that I would most likely go for a Sony next having worked alongside a guy running Windows Server 2003 on his with TFS/SQL 2005 and I haven't seen anything to sway me yet...

nice

So what about the lipreaders ? did they pixelate the lips as the word was uttered ?

Which airline ?

Try googling this:

"the queen" censor god miramax

Wow .. that's a bit out there.  Surely it's gone too far when they're showing Borat in all it's .. profound-ness *grin* but they're not using the word "God".  Did they censor anything in Borat? (please say yes, please say yes)

If they didn't censor anything in Borat, I would see this as highly unfair. Personally, I don't see any offensiveness with regard to refering to 'God' specailly in a film like 'The Queen', which is actually based on a true story. Borat thing is very diffeant though, from the very concept, it is offensive and I think it should have had a global banning and as I gather, it does not reflect a true picture of things at all and it is not constructive critisism either.

I was offended by "The Sound of Music" - the kids got to stay up way past their bedtime, and then hyping them up before they are supposed to sleep ? bah.

The sun, has gone, to bed and so must I ...

This even made the news:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=182462

Congratulation Rob!! I don't know you for a while but long enough to know that you deserve it. All the Best.

Congrats dude. I am sure we'll be hearing great things about your work at SQL. BTW, is it an accident that you found a home with that acronym ;)

BTW, It was great catching up with you in Redomd.

What will be covered in this course? I did a SQL course at Uni which covered the basics of relational data and T-SQL so I'm wondering if this is too basic for me.

Thanks Rob. I hope the year goes well at SQL.

I've changed a number of things on my blog, since I've updated the blog to CS 2.1 with ASP.NET 2.0. You

Hmmm. Interesting ideas expanding on the concept there. Thanks for bringing this up!

I can only find SP1 ??

Rob Farley posted an interesting way to script objects in SQL Server. it's definitely worth checking

Nick Randolph made an interesting point . But first let me say that it's great that the Perth .Net group

Yep, working at home, love the lifestyle... it is something you can't buy!!

Thanks Rob.

http://jayfurr.livejournal.com/84457.html

Hmmm. No, we don't have "topics" but we tend to talk about our new tech toys, or secret projects (some of the things we discuss on the table stay on the table) and how some problems are being solved. For example today we had someone from Microsoft, Gen-i (Telecom NZ), TelstraClear, Transpower, a developer and myself, talking about what's happening, changes, projects, the upcoming Geekzone 2007 and more...

After having read through Rob's post about "scripting objects" and commented on it I saw that Sahil Malik

A good technique Rob, I like learning something new :-)

Best regards, James

I'm sure being genuinely valued in your new role with challenges equal to your ability will be infinitely more rewarding. Good luck with the new position !

Welcome aboard Rob - I'm looking forward to working with you (c:

Cheers,

Greg

...me too!

Chuck

Hope everything turns out great in your new job.  My D-Day is this Friday :-).

Looking forward to catching up at CodeCampOZ.

Cheers

Jeff

Where can I get the simulation questions for 70-431?

So why doesn't God have an RSS feed?  Maybe he/she needs a MySpace too...

You could call it GOD 2.0

:-)

Congratulations :D  You've got a whole new career ahead of you for the taking :)

After trying a few weather services, I'm currently using WeatherBug - who seem to be a bit more accurate than the others. eg. their numbers seem a lot closer to what the Bureau publish. Some of the others always seem to be 3-4 degrees out, which is annoying.

Their Vista Sidebar gadget is pretty nice too.

-dave

i think u done a great job for junior programmer ,but i can't understand these lines of code for grabing score board .please provide me these lines of code in vb.net b/c i also want to display live cricket score board in my website so i need your help or you can provide  resources in this regard

thanks

FeedBurner in the news. Community Server information moves in waves and its FeedBurner's turn to wash

Rob Farley shows how to make the most of the News section web control on a hosted Community Server blog.

Hi Rob,

Do you know what the current average of simulations on the total number of questions is? When I sat the exam (while it was still in Beta) there weren't any simulations...

And what is the actual depth of the sims, does it only test if people have ever seen the product, or does it ask to complete tasks (like create an index or maintenance plan, or perform a restore)?

Congratulations !

*giggle* I mean .. don't giggle :)

Congratulations :D  Hope your day went well ;)

I saw U2 live in 3D - the effect was, well, lifelike.

Well, this isn't the answer you're looking for, but as a temporary measure you can add a shortcut to the desktop to:

%systemroot%\system32\netplWiz.exe

This is essentially all that would show up in something like Control Panel as well.  I'm still digging for the normal GUI access to this thing. I'll let you know when I find it.

RH

Hidden? Pshaw!

Control Panel -> User Accounts -> User Accounts -> Manage User Accounts [-> UAC prompt ]-> Advanced

No problem. It's pretty much where it was in previous versuions of Windows.

Hidden? Pshaw!

Control Panel -> User Accounts -> User Accounts -> Manage User Accounts [-> UAC prompt ]-> Advanced

No problem. It's pretty much where it was in previous versions of Windows.

If your machine is on a domain, it automatically shows up.

It is in the local security policy too. :-)

Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Interactive logon: Do not require CTRL+ALT+DEL

Yup, Alun got it.

I was coming back to post the proper way to get to it but discover that Alun posted it already.  

Dear Mr Farley, thank you (ever so slightly, mind you!) for posting this handy little trick. I too missed my ALT+CTRL+DEL login screen.

I'm not in a domain, and I couldn't find that either...

Cheers once again.

I've seen many posts over the years about using the COALESCE function to get string concatenation working

Where can I get the simulation questions for 70-431? plsssssssssssss

Type CONTROL USERPASSWORDS2 as a run command to get the box up!!

Well, that's one relief--but it'd be really nice to see a CTRL-ALT-DEL login box _without_ the User Picture Icon Thing. I'd prefer to just fill in name and password, a la Win2K/XP (and as far back as I can remember). Is there any way to go back to a name-and-password dialogue box and lose the user icons?

Davey

"So my next thought is... when will this become available on my PC? Surely a good quality monitor could be set up with a high-framerate, and whilst it would be hard to polarise the light coming off a screen, could I get some USB connected LCD glasses and have a 3D computing experience? It could be really good for visualising data."

Here is a link to a company that sells 3d glasses for gaming: https://edimensional.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=28&osCsid=a90d3434788e0912e466c7f1c2e741b6

Not sure if it works, I dont have the $90 to waste on it... perhaps you could give it a go :-)

Start -> run -> netplWiz (Enter)

Yes, I mentioned running NetPlWiz.exe.

I like "control userpasswords2" - that's very cool.

Now, as for going back to the classic mode - I think so, but I'll have to have a look.

В феврале Microsoft включила в состав поставляемых к SQL Server 2005 примеров: SQL Server 2005 Samples

it seems no one knows where to get the simulations from - I suppose cuase they are new.  I wrote my exam in South Africa and all the theory in the exam was only for research purposes.  the only section that counted any marks consisted of the simulations counting 30 marks each.  Mainly how to create a backup, restore, create a database, deleting a user with activity, etc.

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Awesome advice.  Thank you.

I believe you need to pass both the sections MCQ/SIMS, and your score would be the least of these sections. SIMS mostly consist of familiarity of SSMS, backups, security concerns etc..

It will be interesting to see if the spatial awareness matches the open GIS standards currently supported by Oracle...

worked with the /R:PerfStringBackup.ini

found in System32 for XPPro

Thanks,

Rick

Thanks for spreading the word Rob! The more experts the merrier!

hmmm... are you saying that I've corrupted him? Quite the other way around indeed!

But - he certainly knows his way around corrupt data (and finding the real meaning of it :).

Cheers,

kt

You may be corrupt now but I'll make an honest woman of you very soon :-)

Rob, If u do not wants to use COALESCE function in ur T-SQL, then u can use CASE statements for String concatenation.

What say?

Mahesh

I attented 70-431 & failed.so I please u to send me dumps of 70-431 at dhana.jey_94@yahoo.com

plssssssss  

Not forgetting SharePoint of course which is, amongst many other things, an advanced document repository (and part of the server OS).

Will be interesting to see if/how Microsoft integrate this aspect of the two products.

Yeah - we mentioned in various sessions at TechEd we're getting married at the end of July :-) If we're lucky I'll persuade Kimberly to do demos for us on Thursday.

I attented 70-431 & failed.so I please u to send me dumps of 70-431 at dishan[at]gmail.com

Hi all, I am new to this forum and would like to thank the people that have posted so far.

I have run the NetPlWiz.exe and it does allow Ctrl-Alt-Del log on but as Davey said in still brings up the icon log on screen instead of allowing you to fill in the username and password as before, which is what i want it to do.

SELECT * FROM comments

Cool :) no sql injection there :D

I cleared my 70-431 yesterday. 35 questions and 15 simulation question. out of 35 questions I can say around 10 are easy, 15 are medium , 5 difficult and 5 are really difficult.

Simulation questions are on average, you should be fimilar with the product so some extend. In short if you do not have experience in SQL Server for alteast 2 years. Do not even attempt it is not worth it. I have more than 8 years of SQL Server and cleared 6.5, 7 and 2000 and now 2005.

My score was just 700 which is the minimum to pass.

Hail, I've met this problem too and eventually experienced a seemingly terminal approach.

RegEdit -> Locate key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

-> change the value of "dontdisplaylastusername" to 1.

Then you won't see the User Picture Icon thing but two textfields instead.

Thanks for all the ideas above!

For Vista Home, it's not much the same as alunj said because there's no "Advanced" thing under UAC! So those commands are still good to remember. :)

Congratulations Rob (and of course your wife)!! That is wonderful news. :)

Congratulations to you both.

I know what you mean. My sister's birthday is on the 28th of December so can often be shadowed by Christmas.

thank you.

В SQL Server 2008 будут добавлены типы данных DATE и TIME.

Hey Rob Congrats!

Hey will we still get some views about the gunners on this blog? I would like to hear your views on the Henry transfer?

Thats great news, you deserve the challenge of a third child - life is way too simple with less than three ;-)

I am an MCSE 2003 going for the DB stuff by default.  My new position requires it.  I have done every thing that Desiree describes and I hope that your close.  The Sims are the only thing that I am scared of... Thanks for the heads up.  This is the only site I have found with info on the Sims.  Thanks for the info.

I take the 70-431 Monday.  

you are completely right. It is driving me mad. I upgraded to vista and now can no longer read my notes.

It is a serious problem that vista have no right to have created!!

What a great week for Adelaide having Australian SQL MVPs presenting! Code Camp SA on the weekend of

Any tips for 70-441? :)

Do you know if there are simulation questions on 70-441, or just (!) the case studies with multiple choice?

Hey dude,

I am not sure what you did on Live.com but teched australia comes up as number 1 for me so I suggest you get facts right before you put something or someone down in future.

If anyone doesn't believe me go to www.live.com and type in the words teched australia and see for yourself.

Cheers,

Martin

Hi Rob,

Sorry, actually there is a problem and we are both right! :P

If you use the Live Search box (add in) in your browser, either IE7 or Firefox I do get the results you reported.

However, if I type in www.live.com into my browser address bar and then enter the words teched australia it does come up as the number 1 ranked site.

VERY WEIRD!

Cheers,

Martin

Wow!! Flying pool balls!!!

The old place must have majorly pulled it's socks up since our days eh Rob? ;)

Everything happens because people do not want to learn and dominate a technology or product of Microsoft (AD, SQL Server, ISA Server, Exchange, etc...). It happens because they only want pass the certificate exam.

I have finished the MCSA Messaging in June and I feel just as your. When I wrote about passed exams the people request the questions and simulations to me, testking, everything. I send them to the books of Microsoft Press. If they want to pass the exam, they make an effort.

Finally the harmed ones we are us. People think that we have pass it with TestKing (Q & A), without having no idea. I will not leave this happens.

Bye,

(Still on the topic of having community-written exam questions , which results in a larger pool questions

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I took my 11yo to see it on the weekend, and while I didn't have a problem with most of the movie, I'm glad I decided not to take his 6yo brother as well.

It was a good movie IMO, but there was one scene which I thought was a spoiler - but for that scene it could have been much more age appropriate and dropped from an M rating (its based on a kids show after all) - that being the masturbation inquisition scene. It didn't offend me, but really, it was totally overdone and drawn out and as such completely out of context with the standards of the rest of the movie. They could have been much more subtle about it. Luckily my 11yo 'gets it', but it wasn't that funny or relevant ...

The closing scene was a little corny, but you get that, Yankee films and all that.

The cool thing was seeing it at the 1010 Sunday session at Cameo Belgrave - a total of 6 customers, no problems finding a seat ...

SQL Server 2008

Congrats to Ben.

cScape must have improved - hmmm.

Thanks, helped a lot.

Ref post by Nothize... Your a god

It works fine thanks very much.

Just to clarify:

Run Reg Edit - locate "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" - "Software" - "Microsoft" - "Windows" - "CurrentVersion" - "Policies" - "System" - "dontdisplaylastusername" and change this to "1"

Well I have taken the exam 2 now in the past weeks failed both times with the score of 630.

I would say that the MC questions are easy, was way over 960 on those, but the simulations are somewhat of an enigma to me. The problem with failing this exam is that you get no hints what so ever on where you are lacking knowledge. But lets hop the third time is a charm.

I'll send you some info on what could be made to make the sims better.

Has anyone gone on to the 443 exam.  I am wondering if it has sims in it.  I would assume not since it is a desgin exam.  None of the other desing exams I have taken had sims... any help is appreciated..

Oh yeah, I passed the 431.  The sims are tough.

Thank you very much for this wonderful piece of code, you saved my day !

Wentu

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They mention this in a press release here: www.microsoft.com/.../default.mspx

and it was also talked about a little bit on Trika's MS Learning blog site. blogs.msdn.com/.../microsoft-learning-announces-prometric-as-exam-provider.aspx

I wish it wasn't the case. The VUE locations around me are much better than Prometric for scheduling times and condition of their testing machines. :(

Keep the ball's rolling Rob!

I hope MS puts more simulation on all exams. It makes cert admirable (again). Actually, for SQL Server and networking topics, I highly recommended that all questions should be simulation or hands on lab.

It's rather difficult to make developer exams as simulation or lab (how to examine the code that maybe varies?).

I really don't understand why MS don't go directly like RHCE or NCLP which 100% practicum based, lab exam. I recently sat NCLP test which is hands on lab exam. It's totally test my real skill. I also have access to manual which is already installed. That's like the real job, you won't able to solve the problem if you don't know the stuff. Even you have access to the online help.

Don't write us off yet. We're hanging on in there. Kuddly ken and weasel wise will work their magic!! I hope!

-J

Rob or anyone:  Can you give some insight to what Kumar asked.  "if number of clicks (invalid or blocked) or pressing reset button several times make any difference on the score ".  I took the exam yesterday and failed.  I thought I answered correctly most of the performance sims, but ended up around 50% on the scale.  I clicked on several areas that were blocked and now wondering if that made the difference.

I agree with MCA about real-world testing.  In the real-world it's more about how you apply your skills than memorization of commands (which I can usually lookup/google).  Sims and having access to, at least, the MSDN Library would be a better measure of real-world than test taking skills - IMHO.  Maybe reduce the testing time which would force you to at least have a clue.

BTW: It had about 35 ?'s and 15 sims.

Thx

Hi Rob,

Came across a similar situation today.  Win Perfmon.msc works fine;  Sysinternals ProcExp works fine.  Both see counter names.

PsList fails, and suggests running the exctr tool.   I used your suggestion, and tried to reload the backup, which failed.

Details on this situation posted here:

forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp

Any suggestions?

Rob,

No release date has been announced for SQL Server 2008. The date you mention is when the "launch" events begin for Microsoft's three 2008 server product releases, which will be released in 2008. SQL Server 2008 will not be released until after this launch date.

Steve Kass

SQL Server MVP

Day 1 of TechEd is behind and Day 2 is about to start. (Picture by Damian Edwards - thx Damo, or should

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1 of 71

2 of 71

Walcott should be hitting home in the first team regularly this season - if he isn't then he won't be the player we (english people) were told he would be.  Rooney and Owen were both, especially Owen (back soon?) were up there as top scorers at young ages - I think Owen was like 2nd top scorer at 18.

Now it the time Walcott, England need another awesome striker - step to the plate!

We all know that we (the mighty Chelsea) will win the league and champions league this season!!!  Malouda is awesome, exactly what we need - someone who can beat players and isn't afraid of putting his boot in when required.

Arsenal will find it hard to finish 4th, I think its either them or Spurs - but I reckon you will edge it.

Man U, Chelsea, and Liverpool are just better than Arsenal now - its sad because I love watching Arsenal and they underachoeved in Europe when they were awesome, but who knows I don't think Henry going is a major loss - you had the best of Henry.  Afterall Henry was rubbish at Juventus when he was a winger, Arsenal made him.

Great utility!  thanks for the link Rob

Hi Rob

I have seen this issue before on Virtual Server using Windows Auth.

I do not beleive it is only related to Vista but to NTLM on the Server.

Sorry I have no other fix.

Good to see that all the hard work on the simulations actually works!!  Gone are the days that you could download a brain dump and pass the exam.

He seems like a lucky fellow... I had 20 simulations!!

Good post Rob.

I just did 70-431 and thought the simulations were just spot on.  Anything that works to improve the quality of the assessment gets my vote.  

hello I'll take 70-431 exam at the end of this month..but I want simulations..can u give me??? thanks my mail is winter.princess@gmail.com

I am also planning to take down 70-431 exams. Can you please share study material with me.

Thanks,

Santosh

Thanks for that, the suggested fix worked as stated.

I recently took courses 2779 and 2780 and I have a very good knowledge of MSAccess.  The training center where I took the courses has mentioned nothing to me about simulations or what this test entails etc.  They told me to play around with the product at their lab.  Spending time playing with a product in a lab doesn't seem like much of a prep for this test.  Especially after reading the blogs on this site.  I feel like I have been misled a little into thinking that I can pass this test with study alone.  I also don't have the luxury of working with the product since I don't have access to it at home and I'm unemployed.  I'm going to give it a shot but I'm not very optimistic.  Any thoughts?

Regards,

Pete

Hey there. I've made a cricinfo gadget, and thought I'd let you know in case you were interested.

Check it out here:

gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx

regards,

Matt Sharpe

I also failed & my non performance Q&A is 100% correct & i am sure that around 4 sims are right then also i got around 425.

Why it is like that. What is main criteria when calculating marks for the same.

Rob Farley can you explain how it is calculated

I have changed my sims multiple times without reset i.e. i have clicked on many area.

Congratulations Rob! I'm sure renewal was never in doubt. A big thank you for all your contributions.

Congrats Rob!

Not this quarter for me :-)

Cheers

Jeff

Conlatugrations Rob!

Its not always like if i am sure that i got 100% means i have done cheating for that.

This is the 1st time i am giving exam for any certification. And i am not sure how they calculate total for the same.

In my result i got strong in non performance & need development remark in performance based items. And that what i means that i got 100% in multiple choice. Its because i actually confused when it start with simulation & that's y i can't perform in that.

And that's why i think i will ask person who can give me the right advice but i think i am wrong. Its not always that if you fail in simulation it means you don't know your stuff.

Congratulations Rob!

Congrats mate! (c:

Rob,

Thanks for your valuable advice.

I will do that what you told

Thanks again

Manish

Hey Rob - great site - I am a SQL2005 DBA using it for 2 years now so think I will do ok - one question - how much does this test focus on Service Broker, end points, etc?  we are using that functionality here so I guess I can focus on studying BOL for that?  Thanks!

juantana at hotmail dot com

what is a passing grade?

but if you pass the firs time, do you still have to sit the second time?

Some more feedback here with a heap of podcasts from some of the SQL Bits speakers.

www.craigmurphy.com/blog

cant i get one? :(

How much emphasis is placed on XML in the exam ?

I'm guessing it is hard being so far away - I just wanted to let you know that my thoughts and prayers and with you.

Having my parents and loved ones living far away, I understand your pain. Like Darren, I just wanted to let you know that my thoughts and prayers are with you.

If you pass it the first time can you use this offer for the next exam without paying extra money?

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i highly recommend you stop using the computer and get a life after 6.00pm -oh my WHAT a nightmare when your computer clock isnt the right time!! go to the beach and chill out, you need it!

Well I took 431 earlier this week, and I must say after reading numerous blogs and write-ups I was expecting a way-nasty exam.

My take though was;

1. The 35 multiple choice questions were straightforward. Mine were almost entirely about principles, not syntax, so I didn't have to remember precise rote statements - just understand the concept. Even if you don't though, I found that always 1 or 2 answers were obviously wrong, and 1 or 2 looked dubious so simple elimination would probably work.

2. The 12 simulations I had were quite simple. I confess I had no idea what I needed to do about 1 of them, but the other 11 were simple enough tasks such as ***parts of this comment deleted***, etc. I did a LOT of random clicking on the first simulation to get a feel for the way it works, and that doesn't seem to have penalised me in my score (11/12 on the graph, assuming they're equally weighted)

So in summary, if you've used the product and understand the principles tested, the simulations are not hard.

Our thoughts are with you and your family also ..

Congratulations, Rob! :D  Told you you'd get renewed ;)

I have given the exam and i cudn clear it. i didn know about the simulation questions and no one told me abt it.

Can you please give me some sample simulation questions before i appear for teh same once more.

Please send it to ursangl@yahoo.com

Regards

Angel

Hi Rob,

I have taken the 70-431 yesterday and it was okay. I never knew that I was going to get simulation but I managed to pass. Simulation was bit confusing to use when I started and I was not able to use it properly but since this section has 1.5 hrs I was able to cope with it afterwards after struggling with it a bit at start.

Priya

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Some people asked me about what Grandpa achieved. This from Bath University News : The University is

72/72? ;-)

The first two queries are NOT identical.  I think a simple run would prove that.  The second one has an extra "," prepended. Arg.  I agree that there isn't much point to using coalesce specifically, but it certainly makes life easier.

To do it that way you would have to:

set @v = ''

select @v = @v + (case @v when '' then '' else ',' end) + t.[name]

...

If you rely on the concat null yields null, then you might end up with something like this to avoid the "coalesce", if you find that function distasteful for this purpose (and there is no reason for that besides preference, though isnull is clearer)

set @v = null

set @v = isnull(@v+',', '') + t.[name]

Also, for those of you who are stuck with sql 2000 (like me!) you can do this simple workaround:  A sub query with a top + orderby, like this:

select

  @v = isnull(@v+',','') + x.[name]

from

( select top 100 percent [name],[other fields]

  from dbo.table

  order by [name] desc

) x

Not quite as nice as we would like, but I can't say that FOR XML PATH("") looks any cleaner (it's worse, to me) or easier to understand.  

I am sure there is some reason why we shouldn't do that too, but I seem to find an "official" reason not to do _whatever it is_ that I try to do in tsql beyond a simple select.  However, if that method is seriously harmful, I would be interested in knowing why.

Good to see achievements run in your family :)  That's a lot of achievement to pack into a lifetime - I can see why you're so proud of him!

Can any one please send the dumps of Simulation questions to my id. i didn know about this simulation questions before appearing for teh exam. i lost teh 1st attempt. luckly i have a 2nd attempt and i wan to clear in it.

Please help

ursangl@yahoo.com

Regards

Angel

SQL Server CTP5 is now available for public download. Yesterday I wrote about Visual Studio 2008 being

It sure is a big week, I have just done two releases on codeplex in the last few days.

BIDSHelper 1.2 and powerSSAS 0.2 (PowerShell provider for SSAS) are both available now. :)

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Following my preview two posts about using filter and with IN in the multivalue parameters. Rob Farley

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I've found that studying for MS exams a good way of consolidating my ASP.NET experience (70-315), or more recently, establishing a foundation of knowledge to help move over to the latest version release (70-536).

Committing to hours of targeted study is sometimes the only practical way of keeping up. My take is you might as well get some professional recognition for it so sitting the exam makes sense.

I'd like to study for 70-228 and 70-229 as SQL Server 2000 is essential to (but only part of) my role. But I don't know 10% of the stuff a seasoned DBA like Jim would necessarily know. With a bit more knowledge I'm sure would do a better job though.

It's good that the certification program does not discriminate against the gifted and knowledgeable expert, but for others who may aspire to that status the whole process of preparation is central to laying down a useful foundation of knowledge.

The schema is the issue with the powershell script. I thought I would have been able to pipe the Tables collection to get-member to see it's methods, but PowerShell was too smart and pulled out the first table so I ended up using reflector to find out that the TableCollection class has an Item() method which has an overload that takes 2 strings, the name and the schema.

So the following should work.

[reflection.assembly]::LoadwithPartialName("Microsoft.SQLServer.SMO")

$sql = New-Object 'Microsoft.sqlserver.management.smo.server' 'localhost'

$sql.Databases["AdventureWorks"].Tables.Item("Department","HumanResources").Columns["ModifiedDate"].DefaultConstraint.Drop()

If I knew about this when I went to buy a replacement PC, I would have avoided Vista like the plague and stayed with XP. Now I can only advise as many people who have PDAs NOT to touch Vista.

I just 'upgraded' to a VISTA PC. I am appalled at the absence of file conversion from Windows Mobile files to Word and Excel. Is there a third party conversion program?

I haven't posted anything on Reporting Services recently. So, I have two links for the infamous matrix...

I just ran into this problem.

I was only just told about the ability to use the conversion option (i've just been dragging and dropping to the SD memory card.)

Spewing that now I am on vista I cant do it.

I thought this was supposed to be an 'upgrade' rather than a downgrade.

I failed with a 600 yesterday. I did strong on the QA part but the simulation did me in due to me not knowing how to do certain things on the SSMS because I use 3rd party programs for backups.

Rob-

I know my stuff as I've been a SQL DBA for 7 years. When you are presented with questions like...

The backup needs to be the smallest size or not disrupt log shipping is a little too broad.

I backup with SQL lightspeed so I'm not all that familar with the SSMS so I will beef up on that for my re-test.

Congratulations to you both.

Charlie Farley?

Congrats, man. ;)

Fantastic news - congratulations to you all, and well done for bringing such a special person into the world :D

Congratulations Farley Family on your precious pink bundle :)  

All the best little girls come early :)

Hi Rob,

Congratulations..she's a pretty little girl.

Best wishes to both mommy and baby girl!

Well done!

Congrats Rob & Ros!

Give her a few weeks before you start the SQL lessons Rob.

Cheers,

Greg

Wonderful news..

-dave

Congratulations Rob! She's very cute indeed!

Congratulations to the Farley family. She looks like she has the cutest little smile too. What a champion for waiting for you, and what a beautiful post you wrote for her.

Probably by the time she can read, blogs will be soo 2007!

Congrats Rob! And a great post!

Regards,

Greg

Wow! Enjoy every moment with your precious little girl, she is fairy floss - sugar and spice and ALL things nice.

My girls are asleep and Nick is not home yet so will be over tomorrow around 12ish for a cuddle with Charlotte.  So glad Ros you are feeling so good and delivery went so well.

Rob will have to sit back and watch now as you embark on the thrill of "girly" shopping, & I will gladly join you in buying everything in shades of pink , purple, tuquoise, orange & purple & so on, "girly" shopping is endless!!!!!!!!!

Take care,

Jenny xxoo

Congratulations!

Glad to hear Ros and Charlotte are doing fine.

MItch  

Congratulations!!!!!

Thanks to share your happiness

Fantastic news Mr F and I'm in no doubt that your daughter will one day fully appreciate just how special it is for her father of all people to compare her with SSIS. Your announcement made me realise how lucky B and I are that our pending arrival is due in the SharePoint SP1 timeframe when AJAX becomes fully supported - I have until May to develop a system of asynchronous feeding that should ensure us all more sleep!

Seriously, I’m really pleased for you, Ros and the boys.  Congratulations and all the best mate.

Congratulations Rob

Best wishes to you all.

Well done Rob & Roslyn!  What a cutie...

Great post.  

This is the best proof of the real world validity of the programme.

Well done Rob & Roslyn.

What happened to the course?

Congratulation!

How bout editing the ctrl alt del message like you could in previous versions. I know it can be done, as the people who set up our workstatiosn did it, but they made a typo and I need to correct it. Can't seem to locate the msgina dll or equivilent on the local machine. we are running a very basic sbs server setup here, but im rather certain it's a local machine setting still.

Any help? j.vincentadams@gmail.com

Congrats!

Mark

Ahh i found it in default domain group policy, what a pain.

She's so cute!  That's just great!  Congratulations!

I would like to try SQL Server 2008.

Well done Rob! Congratulations to you and your wife!

What great news!! Best wishes to all of you, and I'm glad you haven't let work and Diplomacy distract you from family and children, the things in life that really count in the end.

Hey, what am I.. chopped suey? :o)

Of course not. But I've met you a few times now. I'd never met Mitch in person before.

I guess I should've put "and I got to catch up with Perth friends like Nick, Al, Brian and the legendary Sandi"

Thanks for coming over and presenting an interesting lecture.

We have very few meetings a year. I count about three. So it was extremely nice to have a presentation of such high quality.

Keep up the good work and visit us more often.

Congrats on the baby!!

It was a pleasure presenting at your User Group and thanks again for the opportunity.

congrats dude!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations! Amazing news.

i need simulation question,i had exam last week and i failed,where can i found these question?

i had no idea about simulation question.

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See the little Messenger status icon under the News section in the sidebar? You can use that to contact

I have passed the exam on second try, I failed the first time I took the exam I was surprised with simulations (I did not know that there are simulations).

The simulations for the first time for me were confusing, because when I was confirming the changes that I made it was closing the window and it was showing me a message to go back to the previous window, reset, etc. I was scared that I ended the exam. The message itself was confusing for me, so I decided to make the changes and not confirm with OK, thinking that that was enough. So that was the reason why I failed the first time.

I answered the same way for the second time (thinking that that was the problem) because I was sure that I answered as I should for the first time and I passed it.

It is good to give some explanation for the once that take the exam on how to answer the questions not to create confusion within simulations with some messages in the center of the screen.

I have experienc with SQL Server for more than 6 years (first SQL 2000 and then SQL 2005).

All the best,

Hi,

I can't agree with Rob, MCA and all other guys who support the simulation because one important thing. I went on MS course that should prepare me for the exam. Unfortunatly I didn't passed it. I had 100% on question part and 65% on the simulation part. I spend lots of money for this course and the teacher opened the studio only 3 times. I need to pass this exam because of my dynamic certification. I don't have experience with SQL server and I don't need it for my job. I think that MS should consider two SQL exams one for administrators which must include simulations and one for users which don't include sumulations.

Hope you understant the idea of my post (sory for my English, I know that is not a perfect one)

70-431 -I have passed the exam on First time.

If You finish all the tutorial will be good for exam.Exam is not harder than MCSE exam -70-291.

Good Luck

Faiz Farazi,

MCT.MCSE

Hi Rob,

I think you are right... may be the problem is the teacher not the exam. Tomorrow I'll try to pass the exam again. The main point of the course was to prepare us for the exam. As I mention before I need the exam passed for my Dynamic certification. I don't plan to go deeper with SQL server.

Thanks for the answer.

Milen

I took my exam yesterday and failed. The sims are so badly designed you'd feel like you're inside a very bad VB program designed by a newbie.

No matter what your experience with SQL server is like, the simulations will be tough.

The 70-431 exam for MCDBA guys consists around two sections.One is normal multiple choices and the second one SIMULATION questions.Simulation section is more important compared to the prior one.So,be prepared well in simulation and attempt the exam.ther are no much dumps available in market

Auch in St. Gallen sind am letzten Tech@Nigth Anlass zum Themas SQL Server 2008 noch Fragen aufgetaucht

Auch in St. Gallen sind am letzten Tech@Nigth Anlass zum Themas SQL Server 2008 noch Fragen aufgetaucht

i would like to send me also SQL server 2008 book

Rob Farley recently blogged about an excellent idea for solving the annoying collation issues so many...

Congratulations!! She's beautiful.

I encountered such issue several times. it is realy frustrating. Once when one of our customers ran some scripts to update their DB system, a script always failed. I was sure that all scripts have been tested on our server and they worked properly. the error message was definitely as same as the one mentioned above.

hopefully it will be solved in any manner.

Will be taking my exam 21 March,only got the MCTS pace yourself book and the trial CD ,noe work experience,planning to study theory and give all the Practices a shot......

I have been studying for 70-431 for about 3 months.  It is not an easy exam to pass.  The approach I take is to first learn the technology.

Forget about the exam and just learn the technology.  Learn its history and try to discern where it is going.

Then study how to take the exam.  It is unfortunate that the exam does not really test if you know the technology, how could it, that comes with use.

How often do you wonder what something&#39;s actually doing under the hood (in the way that it talks

How often do you wonder what something&#39;s actually doing under the hood (in the way that it talks

How often do you wonder what something&#39;s actually doing under the hood (in the way that it talks

Congratulations

I got a perfect score on my simulations but only about 60% of the multiple choice.  I've worked in ssms for two years and know my way around the product.

As for the multiple choice, if you can answer the following question, you should be able to answer the multiple choice questions.

Question: What word follows the word "the" on the help instructions for clustered indexes on the second page after the blue box but before the semi-colon that was an error anyway but we just didn't take it out? Choose 3 answers.

1. The word "and"

2. The word "an"

3. The word "it"

4. The word "word"

5. The word "who gives a crap if you can work the application properly".

I have been attending New Horizons for a few months going over .NET. Well I just switched over to the 3 courses for exam 70-431 to get some SQL Server under my belt (needed it for job reasons). It really isn't an overly difficult product to understand for beginners. Like I have read above though, is that it does take experience to learn the real abilities of SQL Server 2005.

I covered all 3 courses and studied for the test in a period of about 2-2 1/2 weeks. When I took the test 2 days ago I recieved a 600 (need 700 to pass). My problem was with the Sims, but that is mostly due to the lack of experience and knowledge. I hope to be ready for it here again in another week or so (I really want to get back to .NET :-P ).

I&#39;ve written before that SQL Server 2008 (February CTP) gives you SQLPS - a PowerShell interface

You are funny. Love you babe.

I'd do it again in a heart beat. Love you forever.

YOu'll have to do better than that, I know all those things already.

I hear PowerShell is an improvement over VBScript, but I'm impartial either way.  I wonder if there will be any improvements on this in the RTM of SQL Server 2008?

**************

Nico del Castillo

Microsoft 2008 Joint Launch Team

www.microsoft.com/2008jointlaunch

I have studied the SQL SERVER 2005 Implementation and Maintanance well and have solved all the exercises. I have taken couple of exams as well. Will this help me pass the exam? I am trying to come up with simulations in my head. For instance dropping snaphots, creating schedules, using sql profiler.Do you think this will be enough? I have worked with SQL Server 2000 3 years ago but had to quite my job because of my little kids. Now I want to go back to work and want this certification so that I have a better stand.

Rob, I just tried this without the first reflection line and it still works. Which means that the assembly is loaded, but we need to get the equivalent of a "using" statement so that we can just do the following:

$so = new-object ScriptingOptions

Hi all, &

Mr Rob Farley,

Thanx for this forum's site and the instructions you had given in the forums to practice the tool,

really this Certification requires some hands on experience on the tool, but not the entire knowledge of the tool,

I had given 3weeks dedicated preparation on the tool to write the exam, I was scared before this when I got the information of the second shot and also this site gave me information what to read ( in the forum questions) from WordPress.com forums site

and form MS-MCP site I got Important Exam Information and Objectives mentioned in the site.

I took it as an advantage to prepare and spend lot of time to use the tool, believe I was just spending time in using tool and the  looking through the tool, yesterday I got 820/1000 (where i was just enough with "pass")

Iam passing this information to inform that you have to practice the tool then you can pass it.

Thanks once again for the site,

sql.CAD

I passed today. This time around I was ready/prepared for the simulations. 775, not an incredible score, but I'm happy with the pass.

Thanks for figuring out the PSSnapins for SQL 2008.  I wasn't looking forward to having 2 different flavors of Powershell open all the time.  This makes it easier to integrate with my existing tools.

In terms of administrating SQL using PS.  It is almost a must for a large environment.  Just try to use SSMS to figure out when the last backups happened to all databases on all servers.  It works ok on 1 server, but as the number goes up, so does the amount of time it takes.  With a script/CmdLet you can do things like the following:

gc .\SQLServers.txt | % { Invoke-SQL.ps1 -Server $_ -InputFileQuery .\BackupStatus.sql }

Now you have a list of all backups on all servers and can go from there (After you've made the BackupStatus.sql script).  This also makes a huge difference if you have a lot of databases.  For example at last count I was checking the backup status of over 1100 databases using PowerShell.  Try that with SSMS.  You can do it, but it takes DAYS.  Currently it takes me about 3 minutes to run the script and a few more minutes to review the results.  Now you could do this with other scripting languages, but it isn't as easy to get access to the underlying objects/rows/columns from the command line.  

Other Possible Uses:

Invoke-SQL -S Dev1 -Q "select @@servername as 'Server', getdate() as 'ServerTime'" # Check time on server

Invoke-SQL -S Dev1 -Q "exec sp_who2"  # what's running on a server

Invoke-SQL -S Dev1 -Q "exec sp_helpdb" # Get Name and Size of databases

# Get number of blocked processes for one server or for all servers.

Invoke-SQL -S Dev1 -Query "select @@servername as 'Server', count(*) as 'Blocked' from master.dbo.sysprocesses where blocked <> 0"

gc .\SQLServers.txt | % { Invoke-SQL -Server $_ -Query "select @@servername as 'Server', count(*) as 'Blocked' from master.dbo.sysprocesses where blocked <> 0" }

#Insert data using a hashtable as the source for parameters.  My Invoke-SQL.ps1 script adds parameters based on the hashtable passed in.

Invoke-Sql -S Dev1 -Database Test1 -Query "insert ServerList (ServerName, IPAddress) values (@ServerName, @IPAddress)" -Parameters @{'@ServerName'='ProdWeb01';'@IPAddress'='192.168.0.134'}

These are a few of the things I use almost every day, although my scripts are more complex.  Hopefully it will give you an idea of what you can do with powershell and why it's usefull for administrating SQL Servers.

p.s. The Invoke-SQL.ps1 script in the examples isn't available online yet.  It's something I cooked up myself.

Hi, there is a lot of good advice on this page.

Ive been wanting to become a dba for a while now. I have no IT certs but have worked in industry for around 2 years, mainly dektop and Lan admin stuff. I failed the 431 exam couple of days ago, with a poor 350. Ive gotta say that i had never worked on any server or got the chance to run queries etc etc, the only experience is on the evaluation copy in the house.

Just doing the exam was a good experience, and what ive learned is that no matter how many times you look at practice exam crams, you really do need to go through the practice scenarios in the mocrosoft book, and learn it as if you want to be a knowledgeable dba and not just try to get a pass.

I cant practice in real life as i have no access to the systems and cant afford the course, but i gotta say, if you use the microsoft book properly you will pass.

Hi,

I found your post while trying to work out exactly how to do this... then a co-worker pointed out that in the designer if you right-click on the little green triangle in the subtotal label cell, then select properties the properties window is for the subtotal values cell!

Much handier than doing it in code, especially if you have a few different subtotal levels!

A search in SL for SQL shows 11 groups. Most with small membership, but they are there.

The reality is that at any time there are about 30K  to 40K people logged into SL. Many of them Techies. What a great opportunity to meet and share knowledge without the limitations of geography. April 26th is the SL Launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL 2008.

Just log into SL, join the dot NET Dev or TechNet SL group and come to Microsoft Island, we'll be there!

Hi,

I found your post very interesting, especially that I've been banging my head over how to set the conditional formatting on a subtotal in a matrix report.

But even if I use InScope in my Color expression, I'm getting a compile error.  I think it's being always caused by my use of "Me.Value" in the expression in the Subtotal properties:

[rsCompilerErrorInExpression] The Color expression for the matrix ‘mtxReport’ contains an error: [BC30456] 'Value' is not a member of 'ReportExprHostImpl.mtxReport_MatrixExprHost.MatrixDynamicGroup_matrix1_TaskCode_MatrixDynamicGroupExprHost.Subtotal_StyleExprHost

Thoughts?

lodctr.exe /r  This worked for me.  Thanks.

Oh, the things you find when you are writing a book. Now, the problem is to spend less time 'finding'

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Hi

   Friend plz Help me my First score 674simulation Q.wrrong plz send Ans in simulation

So do you need to install SQL 2008 or can you just copy the SQLPS.exe to your local machine?

It&#39;s nice to give Microsoft feedback and get the product changed! I first mentioned this in a post

is there any possibility that Microsoft re-authorize vue to conduct MCSE Certification in near future

You folks are making me feel better about my 622 score from a couple of weeks ago.  I am regrouping, purchased another study guide and practicing more with the SSMS to prepare for my next (hopefully final) try.

Diana

I have prepared my self for 70-431 from test king and Actual test and I have also do the exercises from Pass4sure simulations. is this enough or any change is comming in this exam. Please advice...

Regards,

Ali Shah.

As you may know, we’ve created a SQL Server 2008 provider for PowerShell. With this very cool feature

Hi Rob and everyone!

Great article, I DBA managing just over 60 SQL Server 2000/2005 Instances, supporting over 300 databses and it seems my day will be much more productive if I can script in PowerShell.

I know the basis in VBScript via WSH, so some knowledge base on my part to work with, but will like to take on PowerShell.

So, Please where would you suggest I start - books and web resource etc I could use to get up to speed.

Thanks

Goodwin

This was a great example thank you.

I am still challenged with trying to find a way to display the differences or Variance (Var) between two rows of the same column in reporting Services.  

I can code for it and put it in that way, but I was hoping that there was a way to calculate not a sub total but a variance between the values of the same column using SSRS.

In my opinion, the best book on Powershell is and remains Bruce Payette's Powershell in Action. Also very good is the Windows PowerShell Cookbook by Lee Holmes.

I just started reading Pro Windows PowerShell by Hristo Deshev, and that one looks pretty good, too.

If you only buy one book, however, get Powershell in Action.

Cheers

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Does anyone know if this works for the Exchange 2007 Command Shell?  For those of us that admin multiple platforms and applications, the prospect of PS bloat is demoralizing.

please any one send latest dumbs 70-431 sql server 2005 april 2008   email id- selvakumar222@gmail.com

Hey Rob,

I'm following up on Catherine's question - it is similar enough to what I want to do.  The link to the var function you provided above states that the expression can't be an aggregate, but the data region of a matrix has to contain an aggregate.  Is the expression the matrix group, not the data level?  Also the Previous function states (in msdn) that is doesn't work in a Matrix :(

My specific requirement is to compare the values of columns in a matrix and format based on the proportion (actuals vs. budget).  I am using a matrix because our data is Currency based and I would have to create new columns manually for new or removed currencies.  Using a table is an option but not my preference.

Can you let me know if you know of any function that will allow me to reference the values in another column to get the proportion.

Thanks,

Alex

a good glandular fever link is richelectron.blogspot.com/.../overcoming-glandular-fever.html, helped me a lot!

Isnt there a risk of generating system comands with the leveraging of null values...  What if 2 nulls occur in a row...  Can that be inturpreted as an end of test by the system?  not too sure what happens under the hood of SQL2k5 but from a programming perspective...   just a thought...

SQL Server 2008 is introducing some interesting querying and storage enhancements such as the introduction

This query cause a problem when we want to sort in DESC Order ....For that purpose Query must be like

SELECT custid, custname

FROM Customers

ORDER BY

CASE WHEN  @SortColumn = 'custname' THEN   custname END DESC

CASE WHEN  @SortColumn = 'custid' THEN custid END DESC

Absolutely EXCELLENT acticle! Thank you for the reference to STUFF, been looking for a way to do this for ages.

does the condition color function works on the string?  I got an error message "error bc30201" when it tried to display NY in Blue color.  

Can anyone please help?  thanks

Regular readers of my blog will remember my post about how to get PowerShell for SQL into your regular

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I'm glad he knows something about something because he knows nothing about nuts and bolts screwdrivers and drills...

is there anyway of doing the copy only backup in SQL 2005 then?

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Your solution is not correct...

If you add any of < > ' to your string name...

You will not return the correct answer..

Just run the following...

Jorge

===

CREATE TABLE t1 (id INT, name VARCHAR(MAX));

INSERT t1 values (1,'Jamie');

INSERT t1 values (1,'Joe');

INSERT t1 values (1,'John');

INSERT t1 values (2,'Sai');

INSERT t1 values (2,'Sam');

INSERT t1 values (2,'Can you handle < Check it out');

INSERT t1 values (2,'What about > Check it out');

GO

select

   id,

   stuff((

       select ',' + t.[name]

       from t1 t

       where t.id = t1.id

       order by t.[name]

       for xml path('')

   ),1,1,'') as name_csv

from t1

group by id

;

You don't want to use replace since you don't know exactly what was on the original value and you may also miss some characters that need bve replaced.

Here is what I found to fix it. The solution is to get the value out of the XML that it is produced, using XPATH query. I just cast the value to VARCHAR...and you are done.

...and here is the sample

Thanks

Jorge

--DROP TABLE t1;

CREATE TABLE t1 (id INT, name VARCHAR(MAX));

INSERT t1 values (1,'Jamie');

INSERT t1 values (1,'Joe');

INSERT t1 values (1,'John');

INSERT t1 values (2,'Sai');

INSERT t1 values (2,'Sam');

INSERT t1 values (2,'Can you handle < Check it out');

INSERT t1 values (2,'What about > Check it out');

GO

select

  id,

  stuff((

      select ',' + t.[name] as name

      from t1 t

      where t.id = t1.id

      order by t.[name]

      for xml path(''), TYPE).value('name[1]', 'VARCHAR(MAX)')

  ,1,1,'') as name_csv

from t1

group by id;

conceptart.org/.../showthread.php

wacom switcher. I will try it.

i am in the middle of hell with one of these errors. I guess I have to rebuild the master database which is actually hosted by a provider and the databases where created by someone we hired that does not speak english.  I am being blamed for this, but I cannot understand how the collation got changed in the first place.  I searched the hundreds of sprocs and there is no colate commands.  I did connect with visual studio but that should not make a difference.  Whatever happened in our scenario this situation without question should at minimum throw a warning.  

well, after going through numerous blogs and websites ...now i have a bit of understanding on how people felt about this exam.   Its ..truely very helping work.  I appreciate all the guys.  I am about to take the exam in 13days time...I am not a sql guy..first time I took this book a week ago..did lot of reading, simulation questions seems to be tricky.. as lot many of you said we need to use the product..i am going to do that for the rest of the 13days and nights..and give exam..lets see..I will post on the result of my exam

My kids repeat the same line multiple times in their queries, got a fix for that?

I think this same issue works for me with sysmon.

Josh.

Appreciate the kind words.

Thanks for the tip on the exam beta site - I've added it to my feed list. Funny they don't have the SQL beta exams listed though.

-dave

I flew into Sydney recently, around the time the Pope was leaving after World Youth Day. I figured if

Hmm.. Why is it that during my own brush with fame in an enclosed space (sharing a lift with Dr Jane Lomax-Smith, SA Minister for Education), the only thing that came to my mind, but didn't have the guts to ask was "Do you have to bring your own tea/coffee to work like everyone else?"

-dave

I took the exam on friday and just got through at 700, ive been working with sql for many years and with 2005 for a year.. i found the simulations really tough.. i studied hard too.

It also tends to be faster too, as the result set that is being joined is smaller.

This is an important rule to follow whenever you have to apply criteria (except for "Is Null" criteria) to a table that is outer joined, otherwise you end up converting the join to an inner join without knowing it.

Thanks for publishing it!

Yep, we're planning updates most of our queries (mostly using a large number of INNER JOINs to large tables) specifically to reduce the join sets. Most of these queries currently do all the filtering in the WHERE clause and they take forever for moderately large tables (e.g. Table1: 2000 records, Table2: 20,000 records, Table3: 20,000 records).

Of course the example above dictates that would have been the logical thing to do in the first place :-)

I never had to bring my own tea/coffee to work... the office always had a coffee machine. That's a 3/3 for me. I guess I'm just coffee-lucky :-)

Hi Rob,

If I contact websites saying that they are susceptible to SQl Injection attacks, will I be doing something illegal?

I mean, I could find that the sites are insecure by trying out some SQL Injection tricks so if I report it to the website, will I be considered a hacker?

4 of 691 (as of 8/18/2008) - of course, I passed it a little earlier than this :)

Great solution!

So, what do we make of <msdn.microsoft.com/.../ms190922.aspx> saying:

"The FOR XML option is deprecated. Use XSD generation in the case of RAW and AUTO modes. There is no replacement for the explicit mode. This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature."

Does this mean "FOR XML" isn't the answer either?

Good tip Rob,

Thanks to share your knowledge I enjoy read your posts.

How to collapse the data in the matrix based on the column value?

Canada is not too big. I had similar problems while creating a map of Canada in the geography type but I managed to get through. If my geography data ultimately comes from the same data that you're using, then the reason that Canada can't be created (and probably the same goes for UK etc...) is that there's a loop in the data that I used. A figure eight from a topological point of view.

Try editing the data to take out the offending points. It worked for me:

The following blog entry was written before SQL 2008 RTM so there wasn't any pretty spatial results to show.

dbwhisperer.blogspot.com/.../getting-geography-data-from-visio.html

Hey Rob, I downloaded your scripts for a sqizz (thanks!), and found something in your "14-binarylike.sql" script where you cast a number as VARCHAR(4), which means that numbers after 9,999 appear as *: "...This is my *th long string, right?..."

Not sure if this is what you intended!

Good luck with your presentations :-)

Thomas

Rob ... very interesting thread here.

I sat 70-431 earlier this week & thankfully passed first time.

I agree with all the comments that the simulations are tough but lets face it anyone can repeatedly answer multi-choice questions and rely on Brain Dumps but isn't this why we all come across great looking CVs but people who can't cut the mustard in our industry.

It's not about Badge Collecting ... surely if the qualification is to be worth anything then it should only be achievable by people who know the product!!

Hi,

I am planning to take this 70-31 soon,what books are elpful(I got MCTS training kit from MS press and been messing with SSMS like 6/7 hrs a day)any pointer on making the   dreaded sims experience pleasant.

Well, It does make sense that people in power don't imply that to be British  (Australian) you must be christian.

OT: Improving my T-SQL What?

Hi Rob

Just want to say thanks for the TechED AU DAT 283, It was one of the best time spent learning all the tips.

Great Job and Well done :-)

Cheers

IT

Rob,

I really appreciate the post. It helped me to resolve my issue. The default constraints were not transferring over. The CopyAllDRIObjects was the key.

Thanks

The OUTPUT clause has to be one of the best T-SQL features out there. It was new in SQL Server 2005,

Great tip. I just recently found this. I was actually going to blog something similar.

how can we display 3, 4column names from the table  in a report column vertically nd the corresponding values of that columns is just to the next of the report column

plz help me its urgent

I find it intriguing that finally PowerShell provides an opportunity to pipe AND tee output.

One scenario I can think of is as follows. An SSIS package encounters an error. If I tee the output, relevant details can be logged. Simultaneously, based on severity, a case statement might fire off to send an SMS if it is very high priority, or it can send out an email so that the issue can be dealt with at a more sedate pace...

I don't claim to know what's in the mind of the people who wrote the algorithm that suggests missing indexes. But here's my guess.

The best index for any query, any simple select query at all, will be a covering non-clustered index (like you suggested).

It's always a bit of an art and a science isn't it? A bit of a balancing act.

We can make every select statement we analyze superfast by implementing the right index.

But the risks are: Expensive updates, too much space. etc...

My guess is that the database engine people deliberately took a step back from recommending non-clustered covering indexes for everything and just stuck with the non-clustered part. Giving up included columns and accepting lookups.

But that's just my guess.

Thanks Rob. (would have left a comment earlier, but lost mf feeds due to *ahem* backup problems!)

Kinda odd. When I run that query on Adventureworks2008 (SQL 2008 RTM x64) the missing index it lists is

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [<Name of Missing Index, sysname,>]

ON [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] ([CarrierTrackingNumber])

INCLUDE ([OrderQty],[ProductID])

I would hope it's not a 32/64 issue! I'd be very worried if some of the core features (optimiser) behave differently on 32/64. Unfortunately I don't have a 32-bit server to test on.

Can you check the missing index DMV, see if the include columns are listed there? Also, maybe have a look in the exec plan's XML at the missing index section.

I'm curious as to whether it's the optimiser not noticing that the include columns would be useful, or management studio just displaying the missing index details wrong.

FWIW, most of the time I find the missing indexes to have too many include columns (up to the point of including the entire table), not too few.

What build of 2008 are you running there?

instead of typing domain name\user name i likes to use like a Win xp login screen

That was in SQL 2005 as well.

I disagree here.  I think the DTA goes way TOO far in INCLUDING columns to create covering indexes.  I have seen it absolutely destroy databases (and database performance) with bloated indexes.  I just cleaned out 60% of the databases a client had in their database because they ran DTA on a workload and accepted everything.  Massive bloat, blocks and locks all over the place.  The indexes I left caused just a small amount of read increases for select activity but made the DML stuff WAY faster.

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Whether this index should include ProductID or not depends only on whether you decide its important for the query to complete in 3 reads vs 6 & that the overheads associated with having the extra column included are worth the minicsule saving in reads.

Index maintenance overheads are often described in terms of DML overhead (updates etc). Less widely recognised is the extra space index columns take up, which have daily implications for disk space management, backups, index maintenance & log shipping. These are real problems which should be taken into consideration when deciding to simply throw an extra column onto an index.

Adding extra columns onto indexes should be given similar consideration to throwing extra columns onto tables..

what happens if I can't base the expression (like percentages) on a value and I just want the background color gray for the enitre subtotal row?

Glad to hear you're recovering nicely from your surgery.

And congrats on making the move to LobsterPot Solutions. I love the name! Is there a story behind it?

Cheers!

Joe

I have created a matrix and have used the Add Row command to include additional aggregations within the matrix. Using the Add Row command created a Group called [Static Group] within the Rows groupings of the matrix. I am able to format the first row group within my matrix, since this is part of one of the named groups I created. However, the additional rows in my matrix are part of the [Static Group] and do not respond when I use the InScope function. Does anyone know how to format rows in a matrix which are part of a Static Group (or static row)? Thanks in advance.

Please ignore my previous comment about the Static Group. My Matrix has two named groups and I found that if I used the InScope function to look for items outside either named group, the formatting worked correctly.

You rock Rob Farley!  That fixed our issue as well.

В феврале Microsoft включила в состав поставляемых к SQL Server 2005 примеров: SQL Server 2005 Samples

I think it is kind of funny that when run Rob's query and then look a the missing index stats the included_columns are not showing up when running the following query:

SELECT *  

FROM sys.dm_db_missing_index_groups AS g    

join sys.dm_db_missing_index_group_stats AS gs ON gs.group_handle = g.index_group_handle    

join sys.dm_db_missing_index_details d ON g.index_handle = d.index_handle;

It might be nice to know why the optimizer is not picking up these included columns.  

But now if you change Rob's query to be an inequality query like so:

select productid, orderqty  

from sales.salesorderdetail

where carriertrackingnumber > 'FB88-4B92-82';

Now the suggested missing index now has the appropriate INCLUDED columns.  

Oh, by the way all my testing was on a 32bit machine.

The missing index suggestion in SQL 2008 SSMS is like DTA command line util in SQL 2005.

Nice feature.

http://sqlkingz.blogspot.com

Thank you so much for this solution! It saved a lot of time for coding (I was going to try cursor) and is so simple! Thank you!

Indexes are great, but if you don't understand the significance of unique indexes, then you're

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daylight savings is good all you people that don't think its good are just worried about your stupid computer times

Rob Farley,

I really like what sys.master_files has to offer alas the information in it not correct. Most people online complained about how it has the wrong Size data. But another misleading information in it is the max_size column. It makes no differentiation between Auto-growth enabled and Auto-growth disabled. It shows "-1" for both situations!

Test your scripts on at least 2 servers if you are going to build some monitoring job using these seemingly unreliable system views. What a loss!

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Its a case of SQL2008 be accurate compared with much of what we see on maps that assume the earth is flat.

If you were to convert the data to a geometry type this could provide a solution. Or else get a more accurate polygon with weighpoints every 400 KM.

John.

Good article and helps definately to increase performance

70-444 is really easy for people with practical experience but 70-443 is really tough...

I'm guessing a year on we are no further forward with this?

GO is very cool. More so than you might think, and in a couple of interesting ways. This is the 6th tip

Muhaha. That is just evil! :)